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Today's program is made all of stories from the New Hampshire primary. Voters want to find a candidate who inspires them. Candidates want to inspire. So where's the system failing? Why do most of us feel like the system doesn't produce anyone inspiring? We hear stories that answer why. We hear from voters who've found candidates they love. And we hear what those voters are seeing that the rest of us aren't.

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Three days into the beginning of the new millenium, Kahari Mosley and Garcia Suzinko left home to do something they'd never done before: They took a twelve-hour bus ride to New Hampshire to volunteer for a Presidential campaign. What they saw...and what moved them to volunteer in the first place. (6 minutes)

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Here in America, here's how we interact with our political candidates: We dispatch middlemen to the scene, they listen to what the candidates say, they research the candidates' backgrounds, and they tell us what they think is most important. Those middlemen, of course, are journalists. Sarah Vowell tells a fable about the difference between the way the middlemen see the world and the way non-journalists see it. (23 minutes)

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Usually it's difficult to get to know the front-runner in a Presidential race. With the most to lose, front-runners are the least spontaneous candidates. They stay on message. In debates, George W. Bush often gives the same few answers to all sorts of different questions. Sarah Koenig has been covering the Bush campaign for months for the Concord Monitor, a New Hampshire newspaper. She tells a story of trying to get to know the "real" George W. Bush. (14 minutes)

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Alex Blumberg tells the story of citizens who feel perfectly connected to their candidate of choice. Citizens who feel inspired by him. Some will even say he's as inspiring as "pulling a misty flip." (11 minutes)

The story of someone trying and trying to get close to The Real Thing, and why it was so difficult. Kelly McEvers was a newspaper writer here in Chicago and started to get interested in stories she was hearing about girl gang members.